The invention relates to a tank for containing granular adsorbers for cleaning gases, wherein the tank has a gas inlet, a gas distributing chamber free of adsorbers, at least one adsorption chamber defined by vertical, gas-permeable walls and containing adsorbers in bulk, an outflow chamber, and a gas outlet.
Adsorber tanks of this kind are known, and described for example in EP-B-0158748. The invention is addressed to the problem of forming the tank of the kind referred to above for adsorbers in bulk with a depth of several meters, and at the same time provide such that corrosion by aggressive gas components will be prevented and the temperatures in the tank will be able to increase up to about 200xc2x0 C.
The problem is solved by the invention by the fact that each gas-permeable wall consists of horizontal plastic rails arranged at a distance one above the other through which the vertical centering rods of plastic are passed, at least half of the rails and, for example, all rails, have the cross-sectional profile of an inverted U, that in the tank at least one vertical supporting wall is arranged which divides the adsorption chamber, the gas-permeable walls being fastened to the supporting wall, and by the fact that at least the surface of the supporting wall consists of plastic.
In the case of adsorbers of this kind it is important that the walls be made sufficiently stable, because the bulk material enclosed between the walls exerts considerable forces against the walls on account of the considerable depth of the bulk material. It would not be sufficient to configure the gas-permeable walls only as plastic plates perforated in a sieve-like manner in order to achieve resistance to corrosion, because the stability of these plates, especially at high temperatures up to about 200xc2x0 C., can only be poor. Constructing the walls from rails with a U-shaped profile provides for high stability. The pressure loss of these gas-permeable walls can easily be chosen such that a uniform gas distribution is achieved in the tank. All parts of the walls and preferably all furnishings in the tank can be made from glass fiber-reinforced plastic.
The choice of the depth of the adsorber material is rather free; it is usually in the range of 2 to 30 m and preferably 3 to 25 m. At these depths one or more vertical supporting walls are needed in order to limit the width of the gas-permeable walls and thus improve their strength. The adsorber can consist entirely or partially, for example, of active carbon, a mixture of active carbon and inert rock, or of zeolites.